Flora of the Hawaiian Islands

Introduction

Our goal is to provide a flexible query tool to access information on
Hawaiian vascular plants from a taxonomic or geographical perspective at a variety
of levels of detail. Queries can result in a simple checklist with island distribution to
information on names, types, identifying characteristics, and images (illustrations
and photographs). Currently, the available databases can supply checklists of Hawaiian flora
and type information for names based on Hawaiian
collections. The present checklist database consists of
160 families, 832 genera, and 2,499 taxa of flowering plants and
27 families, 69 genera, and 222 taxa of ferns and related groups.

Work is still underway to verify type collection records and publication
information for all scientific names. Currently information is available for each name,
some records are verified and others are not. The site has also been enhanced by
adding over 31,000 specimen records from collections in the United States National
Herbarium, synonyms for naturalized plants, images for many species, descriptions, and a
bibliography of publications on Hawaiian plants.

Our long-term goal is to expand the scope of our flora project and eventually
provide the Internet community with the most complete reference on the
flora of oceanic islands of the Pacific Basin.

Site development
The Hawaiian flora online presentation was conceptualized by the joint
efforts of Warren L.
Wagner, Ellen Farr, and Sylvia Stone Orli.
Sylvia Stone Orli developed the Web site. Data is maintained by Warren L.
Wagner. Jessica Braun has been preparing photographic images of plant taxa for web presentation and has helped to maintain the image database.
Robynn Shannon contributed to the initial database development and maintenance of checklist and nomenclature information. Nancy Khan and Tim Flynn contribute to data-gathering and verification of information.

Information SourcesData from the research programs of Warren
L. Wagner, Smithsonian Institution, Derral R. Herbst, Bishop Museum, and
David H. Lorence, National Tropical Botanical Garden,
along with their evaluation of research publications, is analyzed and compiled into the
databases used for this site. The primary source of information
for flowering plants is the Manual of the Flowering Plants of Hawai`i by Warren
L. Wagner, Derral R. Herbst, and S. H. Sohmer (revised edition 1999), and for ferns and related
groups is Hawai`i's Ferns and Fern Allies by Daniel D. Palmer (University of Hawaii Press, 2003).
An electronic version of the supplement to the Manual is also provided that tracks differences between the Manual and the Web site databases.